Next of in the Thinking in Fragments studio , Hannah introduced our third assessment which focuses on two of Manovich’s (2001) online screen media production principles which is modularity and variability.

To explain these characteristics in a little more depth, from what I understand in the reading, modularity is the collection of many different types of individual types of media, each carrying different elements of media that because stored independently, it can be modified or separated in pieces without losing it’s independence. In addition, variability is the ability to produce your media components in different versions and formats. Based on these two principles, we are given a task in groups to create a digital interactive project that carries the two principles based on a theme.

An example that was shown to us that embodied these characteristics was the project Are You Happy? by Mandy Rose. This was inspired by another project that was made in the 1960s called, Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. It took place in France showing how various historical events had affected the society after it occured. The project helped me understand the concept of modularity and variability because of the way it depicts these principles through it’s prompt. It essentially is based on interviewing a range of people and asking them the question of – Are you happy? The interviews were then compiled together to form a collaborative film documentary.

After experiencing these two projects , as a group, Sem, Arfi, Meita and myself discussed about what we wanted to do for our project, questions such as “how would our idea for the project be modular and variable?”, “does it respond to the prompt?”, “is it a linear project? Does the clips relate to one another?”, “will the content we create be able to work independently”